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David Swindle 🟦's avatar

Well said. “Pauline Christianity” deeply annoys me - making Paul the primary foundation of one’s Christian faith instead of the Tanakh is why so many Christians can seem so crazy so often.

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Hot History's avatar

The Old Testament promotes many evil ideas, such as genocide, slavery, and warfare against non-believers (take the Elijah story, for example).

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David Swindle 🟦's avatar

That’s a standard fundamentalist misreading of the texts.

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Hot History's avatar

As a deist, I have great sympathy for allegorical interpretations of the Bible. But even still, you'd have to reject biblical inerrancy (and therefore, divine revelation) as a meaningless and inaccurate concept. You can't be a freethinker and an orthodox Christian at the same time, at least that's my view.

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David Swindle 🟦's avatar

I am not an orthodox Christian.

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Hot History's avatar

For sure, I understand your perspective. Your version of Christianity would be very agreeable to me. But I'm making a counter-argument that your beliefs aren't really "true" Christianity if you reject the following: the divinity of Jesus, miracles, the resurrection, the Virgin Birth, Original Sin, biblical inerrancy, etc. If you reject those dogmas, your position might be better described as "deism" and not "Christianity." Especially if you don't go to church, then it can't be called Christianity.

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David Swindle 🟦's avatar

There is no “true Christianity.”

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